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He held her captive there.
“God, no,” he breathed.
She couldn’t stop the tears that immediately began to fall.
“No, please... please don’t cry.” His voice, frail to begin with, was wavering. “Trina, you know what that does to me.”
“Good.”
“Good?”
“No...no, not good, but damn it, Ren, you hurt me, and I want to know why.”
“Please not today.” His eyes were welling up even as his words brought another onslaught of memories.
***
Katrina snuck downthe hall to her brother’s room, where Lorenzo was spending the night with Justin. Using her fingernails, she tapped lightly, the signal for Lorenzo to know the coast was clear.
She was waiting for him.
He was dressed in a t-shirt and dark, soft pajama bottoms, his hair in disarray when he opened the door that Justin had rigged so it wouldn’t squeak. Justin had let Katrina know she owed him and would have to pay up when the time was right, but there was nothing she wouldn’t give to have her moments with the boy she could finally call hers.
“Hi, beautiful,” Lorenzo whispered against her lips, capturing her sigh as he kissed her deeply.
“Sssh,” she said as softly as she could, then led him by the hand back to her room, which was the furthest away from the master where her parents slept on. He hesitated at the doorway, but entered and shut the door behind him. “Come here,” she whispered, pulling on his shirtfront. With a soft moan, he closed the space between them and cradled her next to him. Instead of kissing her, he buried his face in the crook of her neck and breathed her in.
“Can we stay like this for a little bit?” he asked, his voice sending chills across her skin.
“As long as you’d like.”
He often would ask this of her, if she would just hold him, as if it would chase away the years he’d been starved of affection. Surely it was different in the house he was in now, with the lavish estate and having everything he could possibly need or want. He no longer kept his clothes in a trash bag. Now they were neatly folded and hung or put away. He no longer had to worry about food or shelter or having parental figures. Sure, Mr. Torrence went away a lot on business trips, but that was their normal.
Sometimes, though, he’d send pebbles flying up to her window just to be held.
“Ren?”
“Hmm?”
She shivered as he left a soft kiss on her neck. “I... I was wondering...what makes you...want to be held?”
“I love it when you hold me,” he whispered in her ear, and she held him closer, her hands rubbing his back. Emboldened by the kisses on her neck that were leaving her dizzy, she trailed her hands down to where his shirt met his pajama bottoms. She wondered what it would be like to feel his skin, see if he got chills, too. She glided her nails across his lower back, and he jumped.
“What’s wrong?” she asked as he pulled away, but not before she felt his racing pulse.
“Not tonight. Please, Trina.”
“Did I do something wrong?”
“No...no, you’re...you’re perfect.” He held her hands in his, interlacing their fingers as he pulled her in for the sweetest kiss she’d ever known. “So perfect.”
And as he always did, he distracted her from her worries by kissing them away.
***
There were no sweetkisses this night. He even seemed to have trouble looking her in the eye.
“Ren?”
